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    2 Sketch of the Life of Jtfickaelis .

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    year before lie came to school ; nor did he much increase his scanty stock while he remained at the Orphan-house * The New Testament was the only Greek book read by scholars of any standing . He made more pro . gress in Latin * although the course of authors read was too confined . In particular , he acquired a great fluency in Latin composition . In one of the classes which he

    attended there were only three scholars . It was part of their business to hold a disputation in Latin every week ; of bis two companions one was ill c ( uring the greater part of the seksion ,

    the other was regularly absent on disputation-days , so that Michael is and his master were the only disputants , and took it by turns to be opponent and respondent . This frequent exercise gave him through

    life a great facility in Latin com - position , and assisted him in arranging his ideas . Baunigarten ' s philosophical Lectures were the most useful part of his studies at

    -school . The philosophy of Wolff , who had been banished from Halle , \ ras then proscribed in the University ; but Baumgartcn taught it without molestation in the

    Orphan-house , omitting only the offensive doctrines of Monads and pre-established harmony . Fantastic and unintelligible as many things in this philosophy are , it was the best then known in

    Germany : Michaelis imbibed it with great delight , and asserts , that its influence on his habits of thinking maybe traced in all his writings .

    Having continued the full course of four years at the Orphan-house , he past to the University in 1733 . It was usual with Baumgarten , when pupils went from the highest

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    class to the University , to send with them a report of their conduct while at school . That which he sent with Michaelis praised his attainments , and prophesied well of hnn , si illos scopulos prcz - tervectvs fuerit" These awful words Michaelis did not then

    understand ; but he afterwards learnt that Baumgarten feared that he would become an unbeliever . This suspicion may be easily accounted for . Pietism reigned in a very high degree at that time among the

    superintendants of the Orphan-house , arttf Michaelis having , as he confesses , no strong impressions of religion on his * nind , though pe r * fectly correct in his moral con * duct , might easily fall under an ill name . This is his own

    account : his other biographers , however , think that his mind was a good de ^ l impressed by the pietism which prevailed in the school , and that it gave him *

    through life , a tendency to devotional raptures , greater than is commonly found among literary men , and which did not suit the general coldness of his temper . At any rate , Baumgarten ' s appre - hension was wholly unfounded .

    The University of Halle , when Michaelis entered it , was little qualified to form a good scholar , or an enlightened theologian . — Rational philosophy had been banished with Wolff , and pietism had brought human learning into

    neglect . The elder Michaelis was the greatest orientalist in Germany , but his knowledge , instead of being applied to the elucidation of the sacred writings , was exhausted jn tracing the analogies of Greek and German worda to those of the Arabic and Hebrew

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1811, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2412/page/2/